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CAMPUS
An unexpected moment—or even a turn that you’ve been
advised against—can change the direction your life takes, the
Rev. Hill Carmichael ’02 told BSC seniors during Honors Day
in May.
Carmichael, who is executive director of the lauded
inner-city organization Urban Ministry, said that as a BSC
undergraduate he thought he had it all gured out, until
one day he volunteered for a tutoring program through the
Bunting Center for Engaged Study and Community Action.
(Read more about the Bunting Center on p. 29.)
To get to the tutoring site, however, he had to go against
the conventional wisdom of other BSC students, who told
him “don’t turn right” into the western area upon exiting
campus.
“It is that right turn that brought me on the journey
to where I am today,” said Carmichael, who now leads
the United Methodist Church’s inner city ministry in
Birmingham’s West End neighborhood, including the
Urban Kids afterschool program, the West End Community
Gardens, the West End Community Café, homelessness
prevention efforts, and the Church Without Walls. “It was
a fateful turn that shaped my life … I wonder what I would
have been missing out on if I hadn’t volunteered that day.”
Carmichael graduated with a degree in psychology and
earned an MPA from UAB. He worked as a program manager
and senior communications specialist at Alabama Power Co.
before joining Urban Ministry in 2015.
He encouraged the Class of 2017 to take their own risks
and get to know people who are different from them, not to
teach or change them, but to learn from them.
“Every single one of you is smart and capable and every one
of you is going to do good things,” Carmichael said. “But those
of you who choose to go down a different road—who go in a
different direction—are the ones who will change the world.”
Alumnus delivers
inspiring Honors
Convocation speech